


come crash

by Adversarial



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Christmas Eve, M/M, Post-End, Smirnoff, Suicidal Thoughts, tom wishes he would, tord won't stay dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:22:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12200250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adversarial/pseuds/Adversarial
Summary: For a long time, the two of you are silent. The city is bright below you, strung with fairy lights and full of laughing pedestrians. The weather forecast promised snow by midnight and you lost feeling in your fingertips an hour ago.“So. How’s the new apartment?” You reach for the bottle again. He lets your fingers brush as you fumble it. When you look up at him, he’s not looking at you.---(years ago. you and him. christmas eve, you had— )(— whatever.)





	come crash

It’s Christmas and you are sitting on the roof with a bottle of vodka in your hand.

You don’t like the new apartment complex. The carpets are scratchy and tear up your bare feet, your landlord refuses to let you turn on your amp when you play bass, the lady down the hall called Matt an ugly name once and he cried for hours. You go days without seeing Edd or Matt now that you don’t have the excuse of sharing a kitchen to force you to interact and you never had the social skills to ask for company so you send them memes and hope that they’ll understand that you miss them but they just. Don’t get you. And normally you’re okay with that because there is always chaos to distract you but the past few months have been calm and you just want to crawl out of your own skin sometimes and just— 

You take another swig of your Smirnoff. Whatever.

You hear footsteps behind you and don’t bother to turn. You’d know the sound of those boots anywhere. 

“Thought you were dead,” you slur, and Tord drops down to sit with you by the edge of the roof. 

“You wish,” he says, left side of his face contorted in a smirk. The right side is limp and dead. “Pass the liquor.”

You sigh, hand off the Smirnoff and let him take a long swig. You guess you shouldn’t be surprised. This wouldn’t be the first time that Tord has foxed his way out of a fatality. Fucker just won’t stay dead. 

For a long time, the two of you are silent. The city is bright below you, strung with fairy lights and full of laughing pedestrians. The weather forecast promised snow by midnight and you lost feeling in your fingertips an hour ago. 

“So. How’s the new apartment?” You reach for the bottle again. He lets your fingers brush as you fumble it. When you look up at him, he’s not looking at you. 

(years ago. you and him. christmas eve, you had— )

(— whatever.)

“Fine. Quiet, I guess. Not used to that.” You take another swig. “Where’ve you been?”

It’s loaded as hell and you both know it. Tord sighs, reaching into his overcoat to pull out a cigar. “Around. You know how it is.”

“Enlighten me.” It’s a very long drop to the sidewalk, you realize desultorily. He strikes a match and lights up.

“Maybe another time.” Tord follows your line of sight. “How far do you think it is? Twenty meters? Twenty-five is usually fatal.”

He knows you too well. 

You forget when he’s not around. The way you two used to be. How he used to needle his way into you. Find rhythms to your thought processes that even you hadn’t seen. You tried to be unpredictable around him. You tried to be untouchable. You raise the bottle to your lips.

But at the end of the day he can read your tells like nobody else and you can't read him for shit. And at the end of the night he will have taken whatever it is that he wants from you and left and you’ll be left alone again.

So you settle into your self-loathing. Might as well make yourself comfortable. 

“Can’t tell if I should push you or jump,” you quip, only it’s not actually a joke. He laughs anyways, throws an arm over your shoulder. You’re not sure if the nausea is from the 160-proof helljuice or the smell of his cigar or the fact that he’s suddenly close, too close. You can’t actually remember the last time someone touched you. 

“Both? Why not both.” He takes a drag of his cigar and his right hand glints in the resulting glow. “Murder-suicides seem to be in vogue these days.”

“Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” you rejoin. He rolls his eyes— eye?— when he catches your reference and you smile to yourself. “Admit it. That was a good one.”

He sighs melodramatically. “Fine,” he concedes. He’s silent for a moment, fingers tapping arrhythmically on your upper arm. “It’s really been too long, Tom.” 

“Whose fault is that?” You’re not sure why it comes out bitter. 

“Did you miss me?” he asks, and the smirk is back and you know that he knows that you didn’t, not really, not until he showed up again like this and reminded you of how things were before. You want to be angry, but all you can muster is exhaustion.

So you lie, and he laughs because he knows that you’re lying, and he lets his arm slip down your shoulder to settle around your waist. And maybe you’re shaking from the cold, or maybe it’s nerves, or maybe it’s some sort of twisted half-drunk excitement because you’ve known where this was going since you heard his bootsteps and you’ve come to terms with the fact that you’re not going to say no to him, ever, because you know what self-destruction looks like on you and it looks like your lips around his dick and you take another sip of your vodka and keep staring out at the city. 

Eventually, it starts to snow. 

—

You stagger back inside when you’re well and truly drunk, skin stinging from the cold. He’s following behind you, locks the door to your apartment when you fall onto the couch. You can feel his gaze on you, going places where it shouldn’t, and it makes you feel a little sick.

“I missed you, you know,” he says airily, and you can’t tell if he’s telling you the truth or just saying it to distract from the fact that his hand is making itself at home on your knee but either way it hits you like a fist to the stomach. Some of it must show in your face, because he pulls away for a second. “Tom?”

“’S fine,” you mumble, even though it’s really not, because you know that if he stops now you’ll lose your nerve and he’ll leave and you’ll be alone again and that’s inevitable, you know that, but also not yet, god, not yet.

So you let his hand slide up your thigh, breath hot on the side of your neck, and your mind fades to static. 

—

It hurts, and that’s good. You want it to hurt. You want to feel the phantom pain of him tomorrow, when you wake up to a cold bed and a piercing headache.

—

(years ago.

you and him, sitting back-to-back on the roof. the smell of gunpowder in the air. you’re laughing and he’s laughing and you’re both a little tipsy.

his hand finds its way into yours and, for the moment, you aren’t alone.)

— 

When he’s done, you let him hold you because you’re starved for affection and that might not be what this is but— 

but you— 

—

Whatever. It’s close enough. 

—

(it’s new year's and you are sitting on the roof with a bottle of vodka in your hand, just you and your dangling feet and the bruises he left on your hips and a drop, twenty meters, probably enough to kill you if you do it right.

edd and matt are somewhere downstairs watching the ball drop and below you, the city is full of fairy lights and laughing pedestrians. 

he’s not here. 

...

the weather report says it’s supposed to snow.)

—

whatever.

more liquor for you.

**Author's Note:**

> jinxedlucky: do you ever write like  
> jinxedlucky: fanfiction that isn't loneliness  
> me: my two moods are angst and dog  
> me: and i can't fucking write dog now can i
> 
> \-- 
> 
> Another short fic while I continue to avoid studying for midterms! Next on the to-do list: fluff, literally any ship other than TomTord, maybe some original fic? 
> 
> Thanks as always to my beautiful beta reader @jinxedlucky! Come say hi to me at @idiosyncraticmagic on tumblr!


End file.
